Academy Award nominee Viola Davis, star of the controversial film, The Help, went home empty-handed last night after losing the Best Actress Oscar to her acting idol, Meryl Streep—and I can’t say I’m surprised.

As much as I thought Viola deserved the award for her star turn as Abileen Clark, the maid who quietly and defiantly raised her voice to tell the stories of “the help” in racist Mississippi, one need only consider the source of the Oscars, the constant bitching of black folk mad that the Academy Awards was considering awarding a black woman for portraying a maid, and Viola’s own outspoken statements about Hollywood’s race issue to understand why she lost last night.The voting members, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation released last week, is 94 percent white, 77 percent male and 86 percent over the age of 50—and I’m guessing they didn’t want to be bothered with all the backlash that inevitably would have come from outspoken black intellectuals like Melissa Harris-Perry and James McBride, who over the past weeks have gone hard against the Academy and The Help itself for watering down the abject abuse and danger maids faced at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, and for, 40 years after Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal as a maid, considering handing over yet another statuette to a black woman for her portrayal as… a maid. Read more…

The new film, “The Help,” starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer has gotten a bit of buzz recently. The film is based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett about two black maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the late 1960s. I was curious about the film, since my first impression is that it is a female version of “Driving Miss Daisy.” I can’t say, however, that I am curious enough to want to watch it – for I’ve seen films like this one before.